The End of the Book

A Novel

Porter Shreve

Publication Year: 2014

The End of the Book is the story of an aspiring contemporary novelist who may or may not be writing a sequel to Sherwood Anderson's classic Winesburg, Ohio. Adam Clary works in Chicago for a famous internet company on a massive project to digitize the world's books, but secretly he hates his job and wishes to be a writer at a time when the book as physical object and book culture itself have never been more threatened.

Counterpointing Adam's story is that of George Willard, the young protagonist of Anderson's book, who arrives in Chicago around 1900 when it was the fastest-growing city in American history. Through alternating chapters, we follow George's travails, including his marriage to the wealthy daughter of his boss, his affair with his hometown sweetheart, his artistic crisis, breakdown and flight, and along the way we see the echoes and intersections between his life and Adam's as they struggle in two similar Americas through two similar times in the life of the book.

Cover

Praise, Title Page, Copyright, Dedication

Chapter 1

My father taught at four universities in four midwestern towns, had three
sons by different wives, and wrote two books, one published forty years ago
and the other, volume two of the definitive biography of a once-celebrated
American writer, always on the verge of completion: next month, end of
summer, nothing left but the index and a little fine-tuning...

Chapter 2

Eight years ago George Willard came to Chicago green as a sprout, and
now to his surprise, he had risen to near the top of the city’s leading ad
agency. His campaigns had reached households across the land, and his
large-windowed office on the fourteenth floor of the Monadnock Building...

Chapter 3

He’d lost his house; his retirement plan brought in half of what it used to;
he’d run his only credit card to the limit until he could no longer make
mortgage payments; he had late fees, collection fees, his credit rating was
nil; his pension and Social Security could cover rent, but what about debts...

Chapter 4

George never did go back to work that Friday. Lazar’s request that he return
soon because “I’ve been meaning to tell you something” faded into a quiet
corner of his mind. At the jewelry counter he wasted little time choosing a
one-and-a-half-carat Marquise ring with a brilliant diamond in the middle...

Chapter 5

Everyone wanted to work for Imego. At the main campus in Silicon Valley,
where Dhara and I went on business three times a year, employees
had all the perks they could imagine: cafeterias serving gourmet meals;
snack rooms stocked with fresh fruit, candy, protein drinks, and cappuccino...

Chapter 6

Alfred J. Lazar did not approve of his daughter’s engagement, but she was
headstrong and one of the few people over whom he exerted little control.
It would soon become clear to George that she got what she wanted, and no
amount of cajoling or threatening could distract her from her aims. Upon...

Chapter 7

Dhara was not usually jealous. At work or at parties, she didn’t appear
threatened by other women. Only people I knew from long ago caused her
to act this way. It was as if our lives began when we met and we were only allowed
to live for the future. Our building looked straight out of the Jetsons;
we’d furnished our apartment with austere modern sofas and chairs...

Chapter 8

On the afternoon following the anniversary dinner, George tried to clear his
head of the specter of Helen White, but it begirded him like the thick summer
heat, and instead of heading home after work he took the grip to the
Theater District and found the host at Henrici’s. The slight, fastidious man...

Chapter 9

I made a habit of bringing my father lunch, and throughout much of that
winter could count on his being away until one o’clock. I’d arrive around
noon, on my break, put his food in the fridge, have a sandwich at the kitchen
counter, then poke around his apartment in search of the elusive...

Chapter 10

The soap salesman, Richard Trumbull, had already walked into Hull House
by the time George caught up. The sound of a violin playing a melancholy
Chopin étude filled the large drawing room, and a greeter, a long-faced
woman with hooded eyes, held a finger to her lips and whispered, ...

Chapter 11

Ravenous Bookstore & Café sat at the end of a stretch of boutiques and
restaurants on Armitage, the main shopping avenue in Lincoln Park. It was
more café than bookstore, with a clutch of tables in the middle, floor-to-ceiling
shelves along the left wall, and on the right a huge mural of a raven...

Chapter 12

The Willards arrived at the main entrance of Hull House in Lazar’s apple-green
Pierce-Arrow, the most reliable winter car in his collection. George
was embarrassed when Virgil opened the side door and gave Margaret his
arm to help her down to the curb. Children and their laborer parents were...

Chapter 13

When I brought over lunch on May 1 and my father didn’t show up at his
apartment, his voice saying I might not see you tomorrow kept coming back
to me. I even stepped out on the balcony and looked down toward the riverwalk,
but he hadn’t jumped, no sirens were closing in, and I scolded myself
for imagining he’d ever do such a thing...

Chapter 14

The Bankers’ Panic began on October 17, 1907, when two dubious financiers
failed to corner the copper market, and the institutions that lent
money to the scheme, most of them already teetering from the recession,
hurtled toward insolvency. Within a week one of the nation’s largest trust...

Chapter 15

That evening out with Lucy, I nearly ended up at her apartment. But not
quite. Instead, I came home and called Dhara, and at last she picked up the
phone and let me back in. It’s hard to recall the precise details of that night,
in light of what would happen only a few days later. I remember following...

Chapter 16

He didn’t know he was dying, but at the end of this voyage from New York
to Panama City on the SS Santa Lucia, he would be met by an ambulance,
taken to a Colón hospital, then laid out on his deathbed. This was supposed
to have been a new beginning, though he’d had too many of those to count...

Chapter 17

The same week that Margaret forced George to tell her, “This is your house,”
he got an apartment of his own. He’d lost another client that morning, had
endured another reproof from Lazar, and on his lunch break had wandered
into the Palmer House, where he’d lived during his engagement. The same...

Chapter 18

A week and a half after my father died, thirty or so people gathered at his
apartment for the cocktail party he had requested. I served Diet Rite and
rum to those game enough to try it, and stocked the bar and fridge for
everyone else. Since only a half dozen of my father’s asterisked friends had...

Chapter 19

Throughout June 1909, George was trying to live for the moment. He did
not want to think about September, when he was due to board a train to
New York, then a ship to Liverpool. Margaret had already gone to her father
and asked him to reduce George’s hours so he could finish this novel, and...

Chapter 20

The week after scattering my father’s ashes I visited the Chicago Rare Book
Company in search of the lean, eager man with chain-slung bifocals. He was
easy to find since he ran the shop by himself, and during the hour and a half
I spent with him I was the only patron to walk in. He introduced himself...

Chapter 21

How he found himself on an eastbound train leaving Chicago was a story he
would write time and again in the coming years. It was a story he’d already
written, already lived—leaving an ever-narrowing place for a seemingly
open one, slipping out under the cover of darkness, running away...

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